Cat's Cradle
by E. Gray
Summary: All these people and events, working simultaneously to one result, to this moment right now. Working, unknowingly in tandem with the red threads of fate, like fingers in a cat’s cradle. Pre-taped programming as dynamic living,if you could call it that...


1: The Children's Crusade

By 5:30 AM, West Galbadian time, anyone who could have possibly cared knew that the global emergency was over; the threat eradicated: that the sorceress was dead. It was in all the papers. It was on every television channel. The information had traveled fast, as three days before, inexplicably, the static interference that had hindered radio satellite communication for the last seventeen years had abruptly ceased as quickly as it had begun. This had happened in tandem with the reemergence of the Federal Republic of Esthar into the eye of International Affairs, finally shedding its invisibility and with it, its neutrality; though no official relation between the two events had yet been announced.

So the sorceress was dead. It was in all the papers. It was on every television channel. And despite the efficiency of the media's big deal all encompassing coverage, in the end it was simply an outlet for repetition of the same story over and over. The same serious-face anchors with their professional concern reiterating the facts again and again like they were fresh. The same fuzzy aerial shots of the newly mobile Balamb Garden parked on the coast of decimated Centra, the same breaking news tickers scrolling over and over describing the immediate reported effects of time compression; paramagic gone horribly wrong. In between addresses from Foreign Ministers and Garden officials, Estharian ethicists called for Dietrich Odine's immediate resignation; his arrest and interrogation, everything short of his head on a platter.

It was the Galbadians that wanted that.

The media never failed to entertain, even in crisis…especially in crisis. All those emotions and cliffhangers as snares to keep the world watching, keep wondering; to keep the world _needing_ to keep watching. No one would want to miss the climactic moment of it all.

Bloodthirst. Politics. Diplomacy. Ethics. Drama. Cut to commercial.

The world must have been glued to the tube.

Far be it from the Galbadians to enforce ethics; the federalists and republicans were certainly going at it in their respective corners of the news screens while the world kept its collective eye on Balamb Garden's static figure. Already there were hot debates regarding the prevention of this would-be terrorism in its most unavoidable form; whether Odine's experimentation had aided or added to the problem, and the, of course, unavoidable viewpoint that it could have been both. Odine had created a self-fulfilling prophecy in his research; his invention and implementation of the junction machine and its subsequent confidentiality, even within Esthar, definitely brought into question the morality of the original research of the design and its uses; and the Estharian government only had damage control and physicists up at bat at this point. There were no explanations or official statements from President Loire, no matter how hard anyone was trying to squeeze blood from the proverbial stone.

Aerial photography of Balamb Garden didn't cease, there was Breaking News of emergence of SeeD deployment through the first floor openings in formation, sweeping the inland fields of the southern Centra continent, presumably searching for the return of the elite mercenary team that had been dispatched to eradicate the threat of time compression and the sorceress supposedly from the future. To no one's surprise, these facts had been worn so thin in discussion earlier in the evening that there was any no further discussion regarding the validity of the claims or the threats, simply the ethics and the political ramifications that would result from the conflict; and, of course, the effects the (albeit incomplete) time compression and its even more noticeable decompression about two hours earlier, would have on the environment. Already there were climate variances and anomalies being reported from as far north as Trabia, to the outskirts of the keys off the western coast of the Galbadian continent. Flash flooding from out of season thunderstorms, tornados, your basic global-warming, the-end-is-nigh big problem type of weather. Mediawise, it was all secondary, all scrolling writing at the bottom of the screen while the pundits condemned and commended Garden, Cid Kramer, Esthar, Odine and everything else they could possibly disagree about.

It wasn't a stretch to say the holy grail of press coverage at this juncture would have been the triumphant visual return of the Balamb SeeD force, led by their controversially young commander. That particular piece of shocking info was hours old by now, the world had already chewed on that tasty grizzle during the night. Now they wanted to see the kid's ultimate success or failure.

There wasn't much to fault the Garden for that, there had been enough outcry in the years since the development of the Garden Academies concerning the militarization of the education system; effectively using the misfortune of the thousands of children orphaned during the Sorceress War as a type of safeguard against the same events repeating. The Children's Crusade, as it were. If the public had known the half of what those training to become a SeeD had been taught; the things they had grown up living with and learning to do as if it was natural, or normal, or even…healthy…

Well, it wasn't something President Laguna Loire was comfortable with. He'd spent a good deal of the night at a table with Cid Kramer, discussing the organization which he and his wife had brought to fruition; the one which had raised his son to a man in his absence…and after he'd condoned and even commissioned his being sent into the void to effectively, well, save the world, he had passed some of the anxious time awaiting a return or result learning about the mercenary force they called SeeD, and what kind of man they had made out of the son he'd never known. The truth might have unsettled Laguna, who had been the epitome of the reluctant soldier; the great man who had had greatness thrust upon him. He'd certainly had the impression that they longer they'd discussed it, the more Kramer was sugarcoating the reality that SeeD were trained to do whatever it took to complete their assignments with as little political alignment and _mess_ as possible. SeeDs could torture, murder, maim without mercy; as it was in their upbringing to do so without remorse. A force of child contract killers; SeeD, champion of the world's peace.

And Laguna….he could still remember the face of every soldier…every man he'd ever shot in the war. He could remember the unnatural jerking of their limbs as they'd lash backwards; he could remember the acrid smell, the raw meat slap of their bodies hitting the rocks. He could remember the nausea that followed the memory through the dust and years of his life, even to this moment in the loading dock of an old model space ferry called Ragnarok; and he couldn't have thought of a more ironic name for the particular ship that had brought them all here. Ragnarok was the name of the mythological battle at the end of the world.

Laguna had had about all he could stand tonight. This morning. Whatever.

With his forehead flat and damp on the cool tabletop, he sat wondering if a person could be entirely a product of their environment; if there could be anything in his son he could identify with or have in common. Would genetics be able to account for anything, or had Garden, had the SeeD training, bled all that away? He may have just met the young man, but he hadn't seemed quite as inhuman as the picture of SeeD sounded. Quiet, yes. Taciturn, even aloof, yes. Much better at maintaining the impassive, neutral tone to his voice than Laguna ever could…without question.

The television murmuring in the corner of the ceiling continued the many-tongued babble of the live coverage. Too apprehensive to sleep and too exhausted to lift his head and continue watching the news coverage or the windows, the President of Esthar just left his head on the table. Feigning sleep would at least quiet any attempt at conversation for a little while, but it didn't distract from the first time he felt truly powerless in quite a long time. He hadn't even begun to think of the world's reaction to Odine's work, and his blind allowance of his actions wasn't going to reflect well on Esthar, nor their government. But the world didn't understand the way things were in Esthar, and that had a lot to do with why Odine was _the_ man outstanding in his field. There were no two ways about the fact that this had been the man who had invented paramagic junctioning; single handedly changing the military world forever. War seldom held morals and ethics in high regard, and no matter how much he hated that reality, Laguna Loire wasn't as big a fool as he could behave. Maybe he was as bad as Kramer, or as SeeD. As any of it. Laguna didn't know. He never had understood politics. Being president to a politically and socially challenged nation that kept itself utterly isolated from foreign affairs had been much less complex then the last 48 hours following the Lunar Cry and release of Adel. He closed his eyes again, curling his arms a little closer around his head to block out the dawning light from the windows on all sides. He felt almost tired enough to drop off, if just for a moment or two.

A pneumatic hiss of an opening door somewhere behind his right shoulder was followed by hollow, metallic footfalls, and a voice. And a small protest of exhausted disappointment somewhere deep in the President's subconscious.

"Mr. President?" A hand on his shoulder followed, and it was Cid Kramer, a man he wasn't sure he liked quite as much as he had first thought; the man with whom he was risking a political alliance, the one who had owned an orphanage then got the idea those kids could be put to so much better use, the one who probably held more of a paternal authority to his son than he ever would…not that he could blame him for that one. Laguna feigned a slight jerk of the shoulders, slowly raising his head with bleary eyes he didn't have to falsify. Just thinking silently to himself had exhausted his brain more than the entire night's anxiety and unnerving disclosures, not the least of which was that his son was likely a murderer, a torturer, cold-blooded enough that he could probably slide a blade between his own father's ribs between assignments should it be on his action-item to-do list. He envisioned a SeeD's whole life mapped out on daily planners, with assassination and guerilla war operations penciled in around seminars and mid-terms and the fall formal. Death penciled in daily as a possibility. The image of how short a life timeline could be all flattened out on paper. The itinerary of an entire life. Maybe it was better than a life where everyday started with an alarm clock and ended with the television…but he couldn't say for sure.

"Laguna, they've made it back."

It was a gentle voice to use for such stirring news. Laguna stood perhaps a little faster than necessary, nearly knocking himself off balance, and making himself look; he thought, possibly pretty ridiculous. The reclusive and bumbling Estharian leader in his wrinkled slacks, untucked shirt with sleeves rolled up his elbows, wild eyed with his hair coming loose from the tie at the back of his neck. He'd have thought himself a sight if a look at Cid hadn't told the same story of Balamb Garden's Headmaster.

A meeting of eyes, a vague nod, and the two were headed through the doorway on quick feet, down the gang plank to the vacant fields near the Kramer Orphanage; a place that Laguna naturally associated with defeat. His skin met frigid air; far too cold for the muggy mid-August morning he'd anticipated. He hadn't really taken notice of the sky until now. Rolling with dark, almost sepia clouds, moving and twisting so fast in the vicious jetstream they were at a virtual boil; roiling back to reveal blue sky then closing up awkwardly enough to send a chill down the half-awake President's back that had nothing to do with the frigid, nearly arctic wind that was unseasonable for even Trabia at this time of year. He folded his arms tight against him and squinted into the distance, where several students, SeeDs, were carrying what looked like bodies towards the Ragnarok, which was closer than the Garden by at least a mile. As soon as they'd grown close enough, he recognized the still form of the little brunette with the big smile; still in a yellow jumper with her bare, bruised arms hanging between the SeeDs that hauled her. As they rushed her by him, he saw her white face; bluish lips, shoulders and fingers shaking uncontrollably…but god, she was _alive, _and Laguna Loire, at this point, couldn't hope for more than that.

Not far after the girl was the blond boy with the face tattoo; carried unceremoniously in the same manner as the girl and much in the same condition. Blood striped out of what appeared to be a badly broken nose; but he appeared not much worse for wear other than the blood, the torn clothing. Following the boy was the sharpshooter, limp and white with a shirtfront soaked through with blood, but breathing nevertheless; then the long-legged blonde instructor with an eye swollen shut and blood matted in her hair; lips blue and trembling like the rest, and carried by a force of what seemed too many SeeD boys. A few straggling men carried up the rear, but…

The President fought the sick, dry feeling growing in his mouth and throat, a hot, sandpapery shock that he almost felt guilty experiencing. Almost. He had no right to react this way, but, no matter who it was that was missing…they were _missing_. He turned his eyes to Cid Kramer, whose face looked almost as white as those kids, his cheeks wearing hard lines of some stern emotion he was forcing; but he didn't speak; not a word. The wind grew colder against the sweat-damp, once-starched fabric of Laguna's half unbuttoned dress shirt, throwing his hair around his face and obscuring his view of the squat Headmaster as he was bringing a hand up to his face dumbly. It took Laguna a moment to figure out that he was wiping away tears.

"Cid!" Laguna called against the wind, hoping he was missing important details as he found was often the case. "How many did you send? Who hasn't returned yet?"

Including the word _yet_ made Laguna feel better. He probably couldn't have gotten the sentence out without that word. Cid probably didn't even notice it was there, as he had clapped a thick fingered hand on Laguna's shoulder with what could almost have been the smile of a proud father; emotion fogging his glasses. His eyes went from Laguna's to the wind ravaged field; the tall grass bending and swelling; a water mirage like the ghost tides of an ancient sea, where a figure in black was slowly coming over the hill, carrying what appeared to be a limp girl with long bare legs and a fluttering tail of a blue sweater thrashing in the wind behind them like a war banner, a victory flag. The young commander; the son who didn't know his father; the last one standing; carried the Galbadian General's daughter, as limp and white faced as the rest, through the screaming wind, towards the yawning mouth of the open loading dock.

And despite the relief, the single mean bone in Laguna Loire's body was pulsating with the desire to wipe that proud fatherly "dad" smile off the Headmaster's face with his fist. It was a look he'd never be allowed to have. That paternal pride in the boy he'd made into a man, then the leader of SeeD and now, apparently, the savior of the world. Instead of who he would have become under Laguna's parenting; probably another, more bitter version of the painfully shy would-be writer with no great future, carried helplessly in the thrashing current of fate and powerless to stop even when he wanted to…desperately wanted to. All he'd left in the past was a series of mistakes that looked purposeful and a handful of articles scattered across the small time literary world: his own homemade version of immortality, his own life after death. Maybe fate had a plan bigger than his desires to change the past. Maybe his son had been better off this way, having a future forged out of steel and cold blood instead of pencil shavings and spent Galbadian 40 bullet magazines.

Oh, the pride. And envy. And all those other sins. The news helicopters were circling overhead, bending the grass even lower in worship of the building cacophony, the whopping blades, the voices, the screaming wind, and the drama. In the immediate distance, the young man was surrendering the unresponsive girl to medics while the cameras rolled overhead, and while Kramer watched, fatherly as hell, he felt him willing the commander not to collapse on camera. Be a sentinel of Garden's mastery over adversity; the paragon of SeeD's infallible expertise. He watched him fight the push of the wind as he approached the Headmaster, that unspoken goal clear as he gave a stiff salute, heedless of the blood running from his hairline and his colorless lips, the obvious hunch of pain in his posture as he held the salute until Kramer returned it and stuck out a hand to shake his, followed by the continued pretense of the commander turning and sticking out the same hand to shake the allied President's as well. After all, that's what people wanted to see. The big Mission Accomplished. The big victory moment. That's what they wanted to project. A steadfast alliance and a job well done. Laguna shook his son's hand in quiet horror of the pale, blank expressionless face that the young man used to look right through him. When his grip loosened and dropped away, Laguna looked at the wet red print the commander's hand had left in his.

By the time he shook himself from the shock and turned to follow Squall Leonhart into the closing door of the loading bay and out of sight of the news choppers, he had already slid into a sitting position on the metal floor, leaning against the slanted wall with closed eyes while the medics were reaching to stretch him out like some rag doll.

Laguna pretended to know what he was dreaming about: a better ending to all of this. One with blue skies and flower fields; maybe waking looking up into the smiling face of that battered girl he'd carried to the ship, he couldn't remember her name…Renée? R-something. Julia Heartilly's daughter, with her big dark eyes, smiling down at his son in a dream. That would have been one of the better endings he could have wished for. He had to hope the young man had foolish ideals like that, or he would feel left ever more uselessly left behind. He could be dreaming of starry skies or moonrise over the ocean or unicorns and flower gardens or snowflakes on eyelashes or any of the things Laguna may have dreamed about at age 17, but probably he wasn't.

Broken ribs, the medics were saying. They had him stretched out on the corrugated metal floor of the cargo bay, kits and scissors were working to cut off his jacket and bloody shirt that looked deep fried to his skin, like breading on some kind of wet food. Laguna felt the stomach-hovering vertigo feeling of the ship rising up while he watched in that dumb animal kind of way, not sure what else to do but be concerned about the continued but labored rise and fall of Squall's chest as they were adjusting the clear cone of an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

The medics were saying, Hypothermia. That explained the torpor and the poor vitals. Carbon Dioxide poisoning and Hypoxia. Possible broken left elbow, possible collapsed left lung from puncture wounds to upper back. Scalp lacerations from blades or claws that needed stitches. No immediately obvious spinal trauma or other internal injury. The medics were saying, it could be worse.

But they needed x-rays. They needed a warmed IV drip. They needed to measure time between breaths. They needed heat compresses. They needed the President of Wherever out of the way.

In his slow motion fog of exhaustion and half-relief, Laguna returned up the hallway to the bay with the windows and the television murmur, where the fuzzy aerials of the Garden were replaced by a moebius strip of the footage of the returning SeeD team. He watched two men shaking hands on camera outside the Ragnarok, acknowledging victory on a highly zoomed and shaking lens. Esthar's rarely seen leader and the Balamb Garden SeeD Commander, the vanquisher of the Sorceress, shaking hands like the strangers they were.

On the news, they were already discussing the allied powers of Esthar and the Great Empire of Balamb being joined by the Dollet Dukedom and the Independent State of Timber. The Prime Minister of Balamb was slotted going to address the United Nations at 10:00 BST. The breaking news tickers were still proclaiming the return of Commander Leonhart and Agents Tilmitt, Dincht and Trepe. Also returned, according to the screen, was AWOL Galbadia Garden Officer Kinneas and missing Timber insurgent leader Rinoa Caraway, estranged daughter of Galbadia's recently dismissed Commanding General. Somehow Laguna found solace in the fact they hadn't brought up the word sorceress in reference to the girl. There might have been the hope that the media hadn't yet caught wind of that knowledge yet; that it might have been exclusive information limited to the executive branch of the Estharian Government and parts of their space program; and of course certain members of Balamb Garden. It was only a matter of time before the information found its way to the wrong ears. Esthar was breaking an already broken treaty with Galbadia by not having sealed her in the Memorial the moment it learned of her existence. But Galbadia's shameless parade of Edea as Vinzer Deling's political advisor, then allowing her to assume power after the late President's somehow unsurprising death had shattered that fragile peace months before as it was. Indeed, he wasn't even sure of the state of Galbadia's government or its current leader. If Galbadia's ambitions hadn't brought the sorceress to light, it was debatable whether he would even be here now. If Ellone hadn't been working so hard to change the past, if the Timber resistance hadn't managed to hire a few SeeDs, if it hadn't been those particular SeeDs sent to fight Edea, they would have never ended up in Esthar. Would the girl have been sealed in the Memorial after all? They would have never spoken with Odine. If all those events before had been different, would the Lunatic Pandora have been activated? Would there have been a Lunar Cry? All these people and events, working simultaneously to one result, to this moment right now. Working, unknowingly in tandem with the red threads of fate, like fingers in a cat's cradle.

It made him think of that daily planner he'd imagined, with all those holidays and duties penciled in somewhere between birth and death. Sitting back in his chair, he was watching the loop of footage of himself, and Squall, and Cid, shaking hands. The kids being brought in one by one. The commander passing Julia's daughter over to the medics in the trashing, knee-high grass; whirling flecks of snow obscuring the camera view.

Then, shaking hands. Shaking hands. Shaking hands.

Those daily planners. He hated the idea that all the pages of every day, every week, every year full of events interlocking with each other were already written down permanently. Not penciled in at all. If he asked Ellone about it, she might say the same thing…she'd gone back so many times and watched it all loop around. Play over and over again unchangeably like news footage, a repeating circuit that that was passed off as fresh every time when really it was old news; something that had already happened being shown over and over again. The bad news was you'd have no control; the good news was you couldn't make any wrong choices. No mistakes. Laguna Loire had lived his whole life knowing he'd made just about every mistake he could have.

The idea suddenly had swelled in his head, a subliminal headache, filling it all and pushing up behind his eyes until he was pressing his fingers hard into his temples as if to drill a hole to release it from the confines of his skull. He would have to talk to Odine about the idea, to have him abolish it from his head with that condescending way he made everyone feel as if they were being stupid on purpose. He'd be glad to hear him admonish him for this new piece of stupidity; for once he'd love to hear Odine's scientifically inordinate speculation condemning what he thought was an interesting insight. Pre-taped programming as dynamic living. If you could call it that.

Birth. Work. Pain. Death. Cut to commercial.

Yeah, well.

It must have been the lack of sleep. He hadn't eaten anything since yesterday. And all the stress, right. In fact, now what he was paying attention, he had to use the toilet like nobody's business. He would get up in a moment. But for now, with his forehead flat on the table top, breath condensing wet on the wood, Laguna Loire felt like throwing up all over it.

To be continued…


End file.
